There are different kinds of actors. What I consider a true actor is someone that can transform themselves believably into different characters. They can take on a persona or physical attribute that makes you forget that they are who they are. Gary Oldman is one of these, as well as Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci. These are all great actors, but there is something even higher and that is a Movie Star. Their on screen presence, glamour and force of personality becomes the focus of the performance. We never forget who they are. Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Katherine Hepburn; these are all Movie Stars. Add George Clooney to the list because he is a Movie Star. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t give powerful performances, but we are aware that it’s Clooney that we are watching and his image fills box office seats.
The Descendants is a role for a more mature Clooney, still handsome and charming, but a less glamourous and more sophisticated character. Clooney plays Matt King, a neglectful husband whose wife is in a coma as a result of a boating accident near their home in Waikiki. Matt isn’t intentionally neglectful, but he has become complacent and distracted with the travails everyone faces in life. A busy career, care taking of his family’s trust, troubled children who are constantly in trouble, and just the ennui of any family. The King is a large family who are descendants of some of the original Western settlers of Hawaii. As a result, they own large amounts of land that makes their net worth staggering, but Matt, the lawyer in the family, has been entrusted with guarding the fortune and leads a comparatively modest life administering the family assets. he doesn’t believe any of the money should be touched and lives only off of his lawyer salary.
Matt’s marriage is troubled and with the accident that has left his wife in a permanent coma, he is forced to come to grips with his strained relationship with her and his true feelings. He is also forced to come to a rapprochement with his two young daughters who spent the majority of their time with their mother while he worked. I usually don’t care for child actors, but Shailene Woodley, as his in rehab/boarding school 17 year old daughter Alexandra, gave a performance that was as powerful and nuanced as Clooney’s. She could have played it over the top and overly dramatic, but she managed to hit just the right notes of a troubled girl torn between loyalties to her two parents. I feel in some ways she stole part of the movie from Clooney. However, Clooney shined brightly in this and conveyed the emotion of someone who loved and hated his wife simultaneously. Their relationship caused him pain, but she was someone he loved and was at the core of a family he cherished (a big stretch for the eternal bachelor Clooney, but he captures it perfectly).
While Matt is facing the problem of the Government forcing him to sell back his land, he is also dealing with discovering his wife’s infidelities. Despite the strained marriage prior to the accident, Matt becomes obsessed with who his wife was sleeping with. Alexandra, who was aware of the affair all along, is more determined than even her father to find the man and prods him along when his resolution falters.
Matt eventually finds the man (who happens to be married and has a family) and confronts him. Matthew Lillard playing Brian Speer(in the first role I’ve ever seen him in outside of teenager movies), gives a painfully good performance of being confronted by the husband of the woman with whom he was sleeping. His performance runs the gambit from terrified, to guilty, to defiant, to angry and then back through them all again. I love to see actors like this evolve from their previous teen drama/comedies to become fully realized actors. Brian’s innocent (but not naive) wife is played by Judy Greer with an equal level of complex emotions and subtlety.
The movie is heavy and emotional despite the light background of the paradise of Hawaii, but as Matt points out in the beginning of the film, that just because they live in paradise they suffer the trials of life the same as anyone else. Clooney’s conversation and reconciliation with his comatose wife is some of his most powerful acting to date and I’ll be amazed if it doesn’t earn him an Oscar nomination. Clooney is at a point where he can pick and choose his film projects and he has a rather good track record in recent years (Up in the Air). I like this Clooney much more than I like the slick ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ Clooney and definitely much more than Jo’s boyfriend Clooney on ‘Facts of Life’. He is a Movie Star in every sense of the word and delivers powerful, mature, and impactful performances.
This is just a good film
I give this film **** stars (more for performances than the actual movie)
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